As I explained in a previous post, I truly believe academic program web pages matter more than ever and should be designed as the product pages they are for our industry.
The importance of these web pages has been widely recognized when it comes to adult and online students, but academic program pages are also crucial for college-age prospective students and their parents.
As Stephanie Geyer, AVP Web Strategy at Noel-Levitz, will explain next Wednesday in her presentation at the Summit on Content Strategy for Academic Program Pages, academics was a top content priority for 55% of surveyed high school seniors and juniors in the 2012 E-Expectation Study.
In this context, any research or work done on these pages could have a very high impact on your next class of freshmen and your institution’s bottom line.
More and more institutions are investing time and resources on these pages — and it’s starting to show as in the 5 following great examples.
1) Clemson University
Clemson University won a Grand CASE Award in Feb 2013 for these very forward-looking academic program pages. Crystal Bennett, Web Content Developer at Clemson University, will share a case study on this 3-year project at the online summit.
2) Drew University
While my screenshot doesn’t do the Drew University academic program page justice as it adds a navigation bar where there’s none (so make sure you check out the page), these academic program pages are really amazing.
Designed to wow students by their original design and smart content strategy, they are a true work-of-art. This is the reason why I asked Tryon Eggleston, Director of Digital Communications at Drew University, to present a case study and lessons learned from this project at the online summit as well.
3) Evangel University
4) Penn State Online
5) Lynchburg College
Have you seen other academic program pages that work?
Share your own or your favorite from other institutions.
The examples above were submitted by your colleagues — and as you can see, they really did us a favor by sharing their good finds.